Monday, September 30, 2013

Don't Worry: It's Only a Chemically-Induced Coma

Perhaps nothing more indelibly delineates the sheer moral turpitude of the right wing than doing a Google search using only the keywords "Congress" and "booze" and coming up with nearly two and a half million hits. Yet now our federal legislative body and alcohol are forever inextricably entwined as if they should be. And even as the Republicans commit DWL (Drunk White Legislating), no doubt people such as David Brooks and other wouldbe centrists are already lining up their arguments such as, "But, but... the Democrat Party drinks on the job, too!" (And even if they were, who could blame them?)

These would be the same low-information cretins who would actually try to look for the penny in the corner of a round room (which is what the GOP has been doing to them since the Southern Strategy, when they successfully convinced these goobers that conservatism was the way to go since everything the lib'rals want is evil, eviiiiil, neatly explaining why red states are the biggest recipients of welfare, food stamps and pink slips!): That the neverending temper tantrum put on by the GOP since ObamaCare was in its earliest stages is going to be the President's fault.

And, while it is not, it seems like a suspicious coincidence that the government that will go into this alcohol-induced coma will do so at midnight, which is the same exact moment registration for ObamaCare will commence. And, make no mistake about it, comrades, the Republican Party isn't nearly as opposed to the Romney and Heritage Foundation-inspired Affordable Care Act as they are to ObamaCare. Republicans are very sensitive to the difference and have drawn a line in the sand infinitely wider than the Mason-Dixon line.

Republicans are obviously strenuously ignorant of the history of consequences that came with shutting down the government. The last time they did so was in 1995 and again in 1996. Nate Silver reminds us a pre-Monica Bill Clinton saw his approval rating shoot up to 53%. As a guarantor that history will once again repeat itself, the right wing-leaning Rasmussen's latest poll shows President Obama's own approval rating at a respectable 51%.

And as in 1995-6, those in Congress didn't suffer, their paychecks were still handed out in time, their health care benefits continued uninterruptedly while millions dependent on certain government programs needlessly suffered the most. Fast forward 17 years later, the GOP is openly soliciting with gleeful abandon shutting down the government they profess to hate so much while nonetheless gobbling up its largesse in high salaries, earmarks, pork barrel subsidies, franking and staff funding, junkets, disaster relief, grants, etc. For the first time ever, this nearly inevitable shutdown will force us to default on our debts and downgrade our credit rating since a national credit rating was first instituted.

And it will all be the fault of the President for letting the GOP shoot the hostage so they can say, "See what you made me do?" It'll be the President's fault for finally growing a set after nearly five years and getting sick and tired of the backstabbing and face-slapping to which he's been subjected by a rabidly racist GOP.

It will be Mr. Obama's fault for refusing to delay the implementation of ObamaCare because he's more than smart enough to know if he caves in (yet again) to the GOP here, they will be back like 282 herpes sores a year later and demand ObamaCare be shelved for another year and another until he's a lame duck.

It will be the President's fault that the Tea Bagger faction of the GOP is squandering more of our national treasure crafting legislation they know damned good and well will not fly in the Senate, will never be reconciled according to their demands and certainly will never be signed into law by the President who has no reason and no inclination to defund or delay his most notable and signature piece of domestic legislation. The President vetoing such a bill will be catastrophic but not nearly as catastrophic as it would be for those with pre-existing conditions to have to wait another year for the ACA's protective clause. Some of them, obviously, would not live through that extra year.

But there's a crucial difference between the President and most Republicans: he's not up for re-election next year. Or ever. All 435 House seats will be up for grabs next year and dozens more in the Senate. And if the Republicans force him into a corner, he can always blame the GOP for ruining our credit rating just as they're trying to blame him. Except the President's waggling finger will have infallible aim.

The Republican Party is like a frenzied hostage taker on PCP who really wants to commit suicide-by-cop, in this case the cop being the American people. They really don't want to own a government shutdown any more than a hostage taker wants to feed, clothe and otherwise care for an extended period their own hostage. But they can't stop hearing those voices in their heads, in this case those of the Koch Brothers, HMO lobbyists, 527's and other special interest groups, voices that coo in their ears, "Go ahead, shoot the cunt. You never liked her anyway. Let the voters give you the sweet, sweeeeeeet release of death."

So let them rip open their dress shirts like so many Supermen gone to seed, let them expose those explosives strapped to their chests, let them thumb the detonator button. The country will circle the porcelain bowl a few more times, people on both sides of the political spectrum will suffer and #44 will emerge from this smelling like a rose as did #42. Let them belly up to the trough and pig out on the buffet. In 13 months, they will be handed a massive bill, courtesy of the American voter.

As we stagger and lurch our way into yet another Republican-engineered shutdown, let us never cease making this crucial distinction from now to Super Tuesday 2014 between al Qaeda terrorists and the Republican Party:

Sunday, September 29, 2013

Random Acts of Blindness

Posting has been sporadic of late and I apologize for that to the two or three people who actually still give a shit what I have to say. Today's post, unfortunately, will consist of nothing more than some of my random Twitter musings for those of you who don't follow me. Some days, I spend way too much time on Twitter but that doesn't mean I don't offer something of value once in a while. But Twitter is like a large public restroom. You're in your own little stall, you start talking to yourself and you never really know how many people outside the stall are listening in until they respond. Which is why I call tweets random acts of blindness.

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Filibusted

What if a man, for want of a better word, in the Senate for less than nine months fell over giving a filibuster and nobody listened? Would it have happened?
Well, we found out the answer to that quasi-Zen question when Ted "I'm Morphing into Joe McCarthy" Cruz, after vowing he'd filibuster The Affordable Care Act until he "could no longer stand", bloviated for exactly an hour before having to be spelled by Utah Senator Mike "Fuck Child Labor Laws" Lee. After 20 minutes in, he'd already blown his wad of talking points and was blabbering on about unemployment statistics.
Wow, Ted could only stand on his wickets for an hour before having to slap the palm of another GOP psychopath in this pathetic tag team of Tea Party Tantrums?

An hour is all Cruz could muster before giving way to someone else. Such stamina, or the lack thereof, makes Sarah "Bible Spice" Palin look like a rock in comparison. Compared to him, Wendy Davis has the staying power of the Statue of Liberty. And the funny thing is, Cruz was buried by virtually all the major newspapers who chose to put on their front page real estate little stories like the President addressing the UN and the events in Syria (although it can be said that, in his mini filibsuter, Cruz expended so much hot air over DC that even James Inhofe was beginning to believe global warming was for real).
Luckily for Cruz, the rules of the Senate regarding the filibuster are infinitely more lenient and forgiving than they are in the Texas Senate, in which old, white male Republican misogynists were just quivering for the slightest excuse to shut down Davis and finally did so when she was 10 and a half hours into her own filibuster protesting a bill that essentially would've stripped all women of their basic reproductive rights. Teddy didn't have any such stringent standards to maintain, although the GOP was grumbling in the background for him to sit down and shut the fuck up. Rep. Pete King even went as far as to publicly call Cruz "a fraud" for engaging in "government terrorism."
The problem with being visible in politics even after such a short time in office is that you're on a chain gang. You're chained to a lot of other guys and if you just suddenly decide to fling yourself into a ditch, as Cruz made a show of doing yesterday, then you drag a lot of guys in after you. Remember that scene in Apocalypto where the Mayan slaves were roped together and one guy slipped off the mountain and almost took the rest down with him? Yeah, that's what it was like. Republicans aren't completely stupid and they know what's at stake in next year's midterms, in which all 435 House seats will be up for grabs.
Cruz obviously doesn't care about anyone but himself and his ludicrous political ambitions. Like Rubio, he got the bright white spotlight and bombed like an Arab comedian at an AIPAC convention. He has no problem with shutting down the government in his temper tantrum over ObamaCare and even less of a problem, it seems, with taking down his own party in next year's midterms. If the American public, for some bizarre reason, wasn't already aware of how completely batshit insane the GOP is regarding even tepid health care reforms as delineated in the ACA, then Ted Cruz's stunt yesterday certainly put them on a lot radar screens.
And Cruz's McCarthyesque zealotry over ObamaCare is bordering on the delusional and pathological and even other hind leg-chewing Republican psychopaths like Pete King know that he's gone far, far afield of the line in the sand that even they had the sense to draw. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that since 2009, Cruz has vacuumed up nearly $500,000 from the health care field, or perhaps it's too cynical of me to suggest such a crass thing as following the money.
But the fact is, while five plus years is thousands of eternities in political years, I think even the people in Ted Cruz's home state have gotten a clue as to what a mostly-empty sack of shit he truly is. As with fellow Latino senator Marco Rubio, the GOP let Cruz stumble out there in the spotlight when they should've known this Brycreemed Sterno bum wasn't ready for prime time. And I say we should let them continue to do so.

Sunday, September 22, 2013

The Republican Party: The Heaven's Gate of Politics

If you've lost Chris Wallace of Fox "News" and more than a few of your party members over ObamaCare, then perhaps it's time to start throwing going away parties for your lobbyist buddies and sending out your resume to K Street.
This is an interview that Chris Wallace conducted on Friday with Sen. Rafael "Ted" Cruz, a guy who'd renounced his Canadian citizenship and will any day now change his name to Theodore Cross because it sounds more WASPish. Well, Senator Lady Eyes seems to think he can collect enough votes in the Senate and is calling Harry Reid's perfectly legal parliamentary tactics heavy-handed thuggery (such as caving in to the Republicans last year and not changing the rules regarding the filibuster, for instance). Cruz is probably right when he says he can get that magical 41st vote that'll deny cloture and open the door for a filibuster but he doesn't stop there: He actually thinks:

a) Eventually, he'll get enough Republicans on board in a Democrat-controlled body to either shut down the government or defund ObamaCare.

b) That Senate Republicans will succeed in passing such a bill and then a reconciled bill with the House and

c) That even if the US Congress goes batshit insane and presents such a reconciled bill to the president's desk that Mr. Obama will not veto such a bill and willingly defund his signature piece of domestic legislation.

d) Oh, and the vast majority of the American people loathe ObamaCare as much as the GOP pretends to.

Fact check: The vast majority of the American people love the Affordable Care Act, warts and all, and if we hated it as much as Senator Lady Eyes has convinced himself, the Other Guy would've won last November.
Fact check: Ted has it backwards: The GOP is not as willing to make the government default on its debt obligations and have our bond rating downgraded for, like, the first time ever but he is. In this Fox interview, Ted was playing the part of the reluctant hostage taker and saying, "I don't want to shoot this hostage in the head but if I have to, it'll hurt me more than this poor, innocent victim."
Ted Cruz is an out of control psychopath who was inexplicably elected to the upper chamber last year and has gotten way too much air time for a freshman senator. Ted Cruz and several of his fellow deadenders are the ones who do want to shut down the government and repeal or defund ObamaCare with this poison pill they'd inserted into it. This party had no problem shutting down the government in 1995-6, they had no problem with sequester and they will have no problem with harming this nation more by shutting down many vital government services.
But the presumed Stockholm Syndrome is a fantasy Republicans seem to have. Not too many of us, even Teabaggers who have to depend upon government programs and services just to sustain life, are going to be too happy when everything comes to a grinding halt and they will remember these scorched earth tactics come election day '14.
Which is the one thing President Obama never has to worry about ever again for the rest of his life: Re-election. Which is why, even if by some dark miracle a reconciled version of the House bill defunding ObamaCare gets to his desk, he will have no problem vetoing or even pocket-vetoing it. And if it ever got to that point, the president can just say to the GOP with his huge megaphone, "YOU built this government shut down, not me."
But the GOP doesn't see it that way because there are just enough of these apocalyptic assclowns like Ted Cruz to make the GOP look as bad as al Qaida makes Muslims in general look: Like a massive cabal of inflexible, fundamentalist hind leg chewers. The GOP is the Heaven's Gate of politics, one that seems as hell-bent on its own destruction as it is on ours. Despite their laughable minority outreach program, they still make it plain how much they loathe people darker than Edgar Winter. Despite marriage equality now in 15 states, they still insist on hating teh gays. Despite women comprising over half the electorate, they still insist, especially in Ted's home state of Texas, of waging war on women's rights.
And then they'll wonder, as they did last November, why they got their fat, pasty asses kicked in 2014.

Saturday, September 21, 2013

Republican Priorities

Last Wednesday, the National Review, the infamous right wing publication founded by the late William F. Buckley, quoted Georgia Congressman Phil Gingrey as saying that Capitol aides “may be 33 years old now and not making a lot of money. But in a few
years they can just go to K Street and make $500,000 a year. Meanwhile I’m stuck
here making $172,000 a year.”
This statement, which apparently was just tossed out by the NR's Jonathan Strong as a matter of fact, shows what a fundamental disconnect there is in the typical Republican mind. You may or may not remember Gingrey blaming over six and a half years ago the wounded soldiers at Walter Reed for creating their own squalor when the scandal came out of the subhuman conditions they were living in. This blame the victim/blame the system mindset pervades every nook and cranny and every single facet in the reptilian Republican mind.
And I'm sure Gingrey's not alone in griping about making "only" 8 and a half times what the poverty level is for a family of four, despite the fact that financial disclosures listed Gingrey's net worth at around $3,000,000. According to right wing nut jobs like Gingrey, why, it's hardly worth getting into public service because you can't get rich doing it, not when there are kids half your age making serious pelf working as registered lobbyists on K Street. Which hardly makes sense because Gingrey knew when he first ran for office what he'd make.
A two year-old can connect these dots, people. Gingrey's griping he's not making enough for himself from the taxpayer teat, then he votes just hours later to defund ObamaCare and deny SNAP benefits to those same impoverished families who pay his salary. In other words, biting the nipple that feeds him.
Why we keep electing avaricious cocksuckers like Phil Gingrey into elected office year after year remains a perpetual mystery to me. Perhaps it's because the Southern Strategy is still firmly in place over four decades after its implementation. Because only low information rednecks would continue voting for a self-absorbed prick like Phil Gingrey every other year as he campaigns and explains to them how cutting their food stamps and denying them access to more affordable health care is actually a good thing for them.
Because anything would be better than voting for a liberal Democrat, y'all.

Monday, September 16, 2013

Exit Sandman

Last evening at Fenway Park, history wasn't made as much as commemorated when the Boston Red Sox honored Mariano Rivera, indisputably the greatest closer of all time. This being Number 42's final season and last night capping the last series between the two teams, Rivera was feted with a short roast by Kevin Millar, Bill Mueller and Dave Roberts, the three men who'd victimized the usually reliable closer in Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS. The Red Sox weren't just close to extinction, they were thisclose to getting swept in what had been a storybook season. And Millar, Mueller and Roberts were gleefully rubbing the Sox's comeback in Rivera's face, a comeback that presaged perhaps the most catastrophic collapse in the history of professional sports. But after all the jokes were made, the Red Sox organization presented Rivera with a painting of his wide grin on Opening Day 2005 when the hometown team got their World Series rings in front of the Yankees. They also gave him the pitching rubber with a plaque from the visitor's bullpen, an original 1934 seat with his number on it, his number from the Green Monster signed by all the Red Sox players and a check from the John Henry group to aid his favorite charities in Panama.
In the midst of the ongoing steroid scandals swirling throughout MLB, including the suspension of Alex Rodriquez (a man who will never be known as a team player), it's nice to see that, once again, baseball has a hero to wipe off some of that tarnish. Rivera was always a class act back when he was a setup man for John Wetteland in the mid-late 90's and caused spines all over New England to turn icy cold when he was put into a game against the Red Sox. Historically, the game's greatest closers have been lifelong National Leaguers (Lee Smith, Billy Wagner, Rob Nenn, Trevor Hoffman, John Franco, etc). But the American League's Mo Rivera was greater than any of them.
Mariano Rivera gave Red Sox Nation more fits than reasons to celebrate. But it could be said that, despite the ongoing fierce rivalry between the two AL East powerhouses, Boston fans love baseball excellence a little more than their hometown team. So, in my own small way, I wish to honor Mariano Rivera by presenting
ten of the most amazing facts about his career, culled from his official stats page on baseball-reference.com.

1) Nominated for six Cy Young Awards, one usually reserved for starters.

2) In 141.0 postseason innings, surrendered just 2 home runs.

3) 11 of 19 seasons finished with an ERA of under 2.00, for a lifetime 2.22.

4) In 16 postseasons and 32 series and 141.0 innings, Rivera posted a lifetime ERA of 0.70 and was 8-1 out of the 'pen.

5) Is still the best closer alive. At age 43, Rivera is currently 6-2, with a 2.30 ERA, 51 strikeouts vs 9 walks and has 43 saves with a fourth place team.

6) 9 seasons of 40 or more saves.

7) A 13 time allstar, in 8 midseason classics in which he'd pitched, Rivera never gave up a single run while getting four saves.

8) In 1996, while being used exclusively as a reliever, Rivera struck out an astonishing 130 men in just 107.2 innings.

9) In half his postseasons, was never once scored upon.

10) Earned a record 651 regular season, 42 postseason and 4 Allstar saves, a total of 697, with just one pitch, an inside cut fastball.

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Open Thread

Monday, September 9, 2013

Oh, Death, Where is Thy Sting?

Sweet fucking Jesus on whole wheat toast, this fat prick again?
George Zimmerman is the Teflon Terrorist, the Jenny Craig version of Ronald Reagan, a man with a soft, blubbery face like second generation dictators such as Baby Doc Duvalier and Kim Jong Un. It's preordained that before he's 32, George Zimmerman will be found dead in the back room of a Cancún bodega that doubles as a gay porn movie set, his bloated corpse on discovery by the laughing Mexican authorities being stripped, deformed penises drawn on him with eyeliner and picked over by barely-illegal gay porn actors. Between now and then, his jiggling puss and that of his soon-to-be ex wife Shellie will be plastered all over tabloid front pages vying for space with Lindsay Lohan, Miley Cyrus and Bill and Monica.
I strenuously tried to ignore this social and psychological abortion, save for a Top Ten list, when he got pulled over in Texas for speeding, with a gun in his car and thought I was over him when I failed to mention even on Twitter him getting pulled over in Florida for, again, speeding.
Oh, yeah, and he also murdered an unarmed African American youth for dressing appropriately on a rainy night.
But just a few hours ago, George Zimmerman was picked up by Lake Mary police after he'd allegedly punched his father-in-law in the face and brandished a gun at both him and his estranged wife, who then had a change of heart and decided, just after making a terrified and terrifying 911 call, not to press charges, meaning George Zimmerman is once again at large and on the loose.
Zimmerman was in the company of his bodyguard that he supposedly keeps with him at all times, a bodyguard that was nonetheless conspicuously absent at the times Zimmerman was unsuccessfully re-enacting Natural Born Killers in the great states of Texas and Florida. He was said by his wife to be daring her to come closer, no doubt so he could invoke Stand Your Ground, his useless bodyguard, obviously, present for the purposes of intimidation .
Ergo, despite being basically a distended asshole wrapped around a gun, assaulting her father who nearly had a heart attack over the incident, threatened both their lives, destroyed her cell phone with a knife, Shellie Zimmerman still thinks they can work things out, a sense of optimism that has gotten countless women killed when put in similar circumstances.
It's bad enough that after this incident, we're doomed to see these two buffoons put on the cover of every edition of every tabloid like they're a cross between Rob and Amber and Bonnie and Clyde. It's bad enough that we have to hear time and again this slimy asshole once again got released by law enforcement under circumstances that a black man would likely never survive. It's bad enough when we hear about Ohio gun groups holding fund-raising drives that raised 12 grand to put a loaded weapon back in this man's hands.
But the worst part about this is this man is getting so much attention in the media as tabloid and Twitter fun fodder when the real bad guys are the signature-forging assholes at ALEC and nearly two dozen state legislatures for putting Stand Your Ground laws on the books not for the augmentation of personal liberty but for that of gun and ammo sales.
Trayvon Martin ought to be remembered because he was the innocent victim of ALEC, the Florida legislature, Stand Your Ground and, ultimately, George Zimmerman. The former was the victim of a racially-motivated execution. The latter wouldn't even be newsworthy were it not for the cold-blooded murder he'd carried out with relative impunity. Were it not for his Bircher-celebrated execution of a defenseless, innocent child barely a month beyond his 17th birthday, Zimmerman would be a quickly forgotten footnote in several smalltown police blotters.
George Zimmerman is the noxious stinkweed arising from the fetid ground of Stand Your Ground because we live in a nation in which certain factions have a problem with low-income and middle class people getting affordable health care yet none whatsoever with supporting corporately-driven model legislation that puts gun and ammunition sales at a much higher premium than the lives of innocents.
So let's stop talking about George Zimmerman and let's relegate him to the obscurity he so richly deserves until the news comes out of that gay porno movie set in Cancún.

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Top 10 Diversions John McCain Found During Syria Hearing

Yesterday during a three hour-long hearing about Syria, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was caught by a photographer playing Poker on his iPhone. Senator McCain was unapologetic on Twitter, sarcastically calling the disclosure a "Scandal!" (Last November, Sen. McCain had held a press conference castigating President Obama for not holding meetings with Congressional leaders about Benghazi during a classified Benghazi briefing). But Poker was not the only thing the senior Senator from Arizona was caught doing during the hearing. What were his other diversions?

Sunday, September 1, 2013

Saddam Was More Compliant With Inspectors

5 TX fertilizer plants carrying same shit that exploded & killed 15 people last April have refused to be inspected. http://t.co/rajVbT92LV
— Robert Crawford (@jurassicpork59) August 31, 2013

Yeah, you read that right. Nearly a half dozen Texas fertilizer plants housing ammonium nitrate, the extremely combustible substance that blew up a West, Texas fertilizer plant that claimed 15 human lives and injured over 200 others have refused to be inspected and, under Texas law, or the lack of them, they have that right.
The article goes on to state that lawmakers were "intrigued" by the total lack of cooperation that saw the State Fire Marshall literally turned away at the front door by five fertilizer plant owners.
Saddam Hussein, in the run up to war with his country, was more forthcoming and transparent with UN weapons inspectors than these jackals who apparently think that only other fertilizer plants carrying over 5 tons of ammonium nitrate, one of the two ingredients that blew up the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, explode. Which is how and why they have no problem endangering the lives of their workers.
Because if you own a shit warehouse in Texas, you aren't bothered by state regulations of any sort. hell, there isn't even a state fire code in Texas, the driest and most parched state in the union, if last summer's heat wave was any indication.
And this begs the question: If the state Fire Marshal has no enforcement powers, isn't allowed to enter a facility if the owner says No and cannot even show up unannounced for inspections, then why have one on the payroll? Any compliance he gets is strictly voluntary, something I have never heard of in any state.